We were parking at DD Saturday night and two Cast Member's were in a golf cart. A large truck cut them off and the CM driving the golf cart YELLED "double yellow lines a**hole!" We all were like OMG did that just happen!?The truck was driving like a nut trying to park but still!!!
But there is NO reason why they have to put up with abusive guests, and there ARE abusive guests that excpect to be treated like royalty, even as they curse a CM.
And NO ONE has to put up with abusive behaviour from another human being.
I think the bottom line of this whole thread is that people aren't perfect. CMs aren't perfect; Guests aren't perfect.
However, in the universe that is WDW, everything IS supposed to be perfect. Or, at least, more perfect than "the real world." So, yes ... CMs are expected to smile at all times, be nice, be calm, handle anything without getting upset, and do it over and over again all day long. Because upholding that fantasy is their job. The ice cream scooper's job isn't just to scoop ice cream, it's to uphold the Main Street USA fantasy of small town America. IMO, that "story" is not taught well enough to CMs. They don't understand that they truly are part of the "show", as Walt said so long ago.
But then we're back to the whole "people aren't perfect" thing. Which leads me to this ... for those folks who witnessed a "less-than-perfect" CM on their last vacation, do a couple of things.
And if the "bad actors" are such that they are totally ruining your experience, then call for a manager or walk over to GR and file a complaint. Otherwise, just look at it as a single bad performance in a play with a HUGE cast, and move on to the next scene!
- First ... think of them not as a CM who yelled or a CM who was grumpy. Think of them as an actor who slipped out of character for a moment. And trust that they "found their character" shortly afterwards, just as they would on a stage.
- Second ... put those CMs in context. If, on your week-long vacation, you encountered three CMs who were "out of character", then you probably met, witnessed or interacted with at least a thousand more who were doing just as they should have been doing -- staying in character. Some better than others, of course, just as on a stage there are some actors who are better than others. But keep it in context. Three bad actors against a thousand good actors is a pretty darn workable ratio, IMO.
But there is NO reason why they have to put up with abusive guests, and there ARE abusive guests that excpect to be treated like royalty, even as they curse a CM.
And NO ONE has to put up with abusive behaviour from another human being.
Maybe life itself forced them to take a job, where people can be abusive, and have expectations that are unreasonable. This is an issue. People can expect unreasonable things of these poor CM's. Yes, I agree that they should provide good service, but like I said before, they have bad days. If I had people screaming at me 24/7 because THEIR vacation was not magical, I think I might have to tell them off too!
People get angry towards the CM's, and yet we don't expect them to tell someone off every now and then? Why should THEY have to take the abuse we as vacationers dish out when we can't / shouldn't take it from them?
If we want respect, then we have to give respect. These are hardworking people. They are NOT paid to take the abuse that people hand out to them!
If any CM's are reading this, then I want to say THANK YOU for all your hard work! It can't be an easy job!
Maybe life itself forced them to take a job, where people can be abusive, and have expectations that are unreasonable. This is an issue. People can expect unreasonable things of these poor CM's. Yes, I agree that they should provide good service, but like I said before, they have bad days. If I had people screaming at me 24/7 because THEIR vacation was not magical, I think I might have to tell them off too!
People get angry towards the CM's, and yet we don't expect them to tell someone off every now and then? Why should THEY have to take the abuse we as vacationers dish out when we can't / shouldn't take it from them?
If we want respect, then we have to give respect. These are hardworking people. They are NOT paid to take the abuse that people hand out to them!
If any CM's are reading this, then I want to say THANK YOU for all your hard work! It can't be an easy job!
One day I was working at the Bwalk and my job was to stand at the door and greet guests and hand out stickers. Well, I struck up a conversation with a dad and he was telling me how they had been here for a week and one of his little girl's had gotten the flu and had spent all but one half day of their vacation in their room sick. The heat was just too much for her and every day she would go to bed telling her dad that she really thought she was going to be well enough to go to the parks the next day. He was headed out for breakfast and the family had decided to take the girl to Epcot since it was the closest and they were going to spend a few hours there until the little girl got too tired and would come back and spend the last night in the room watching movies. He wasn't expecting anything from me, we were just talking while he was waiting for some of his other kids. He had tears in his eyes as he thanked me for doing that for his daughter. Well, I got in trouble with my manager because I shouldn't have left my greeting position near the door to do this. I explained the whole situation, but that didn't change the fact that my job was to hand out stickers at the door and smile and wave at people. A few weeks later I got a copy of a letter this guest had written to praise me to my management. Did that change things? No. I was told there was never a reason to leave this 3 foot by 3 foot area and that if one of the higher ups had walked by and noticed me gone I would have been fired. This would have never happened pre-recession. 
Just a little story to add to my monstrously long post
Well, as soon as he left I decided that even though I couldn't make this girl's flu go away, I could make this a memorable day for her. I went to one of the concierge CMs that I knew and we planned a party in their room. I had gotten the guest's name and the girl's favorite characters so we had each of her favorite characters write her a card, we got some plush toys for her and had housekeeping set it up on the bed and sprinkle pixie dust all around. We also arranged for one of her favorite characters to call her room that evening when we figured they would be in. This all took less than 15 minutes on my part and I was really excited to be doing something that I felt sure this little girl would remember.
So what happened? Well the next day I saw the dad and the little girl carrying one of the plush toys before they left and he told me he knew it was me because I was the only one that knew. Of course I told him that it was all Tinkerbell and I really had no idea what he was talking about
Just some food for thought.
Let me start off by saying that up until a few months ago I was a cast member and everything in this post is from my own personal experience.
1. CM's do take A LOT of abuse. Working at WDW made me lose all faith in humanity. It is not just a bad guest once a week or day, it was more like a bad guest every 30 minutes. I have stories that would completely shock you. The only time it wasn't like this was when I worked in the call center where you averaged a pg (problem guest) once a day. I can't tell you how many times CM's have to call security on guests. On multiple occasions I had my life threatened. Luckily, security is there to protect CM's and I can tell you that we relied heavily on them. A friend of mine even had a security guard assigned to her during the week long stay of a guest that was stalking her and had made threats to her. Stalking CM's is very common. For those of you that say CM's don't deal with a lot on a regular basis, you have no idea what you're talking about. WDW is like a pressure cooker and in my experience, about every 30 minutes a guest would explode and 99% of the time it was about something you had no control over or didn't even concern you. It was like, "My anger management coach told me to take things out on my pillow. There's a cast member with a name tag that looks like a pillow, I guess that's just as good." And don't even get me started on the sexual abuse guests dish out to the female cast members. My husband had to console me many nights as I was in tears from what people would do. Before working at WDW I thought people were basically good. Now I believe that people are basically bad and are only good when they want to impress someone.
2. When I started at WDW the motto was, "Do whatever it takes to make a guest's day." That is what so many of us loved about working there. If we saw an opportunity to create some magic we were given free reign to do so. Work days were filled with random Magical Moments that not only made the guest's day, but also made it so much easier to put up with the crap. It was all worth it to know that you truly made a difference in a family's life. I get teary just thinking about all the Magical Moments I shared with guests. A CM's job was to make magic for the guests and that always positively affects the bottom line. Many times I would spend my lunch break running around and coordinating with other CMs to create the magic and I absolutely loved it!
3. Once the economy took a downturn, things completely changed. You weren't allowed to do Magical Moments except for a certain number of very specific things. People were getting written up and fired left and right. You were given a specific job and you could not stray from that at all. If a kid fell 20 feet away and you went and helped them up and took them to the nearest ice cream stand to get their ice cream replaced and then maybe helped the family find a ride, you were risking your job if the right person walked by and saw you away from your designated area (before you were risking your job if you didn't help in this way). I would ask my managers what we should do when a guest needs help with such and such and we were told that it wasn't our problem, we were supposed to do our specific job and stick to it. I had friends get fired for helping guests and I knew others who got demoted. It's Disney's way of showing that they are trying to save money and have a zero tolerance policy with CMs. Only problem is they developed a zero tolerance policy towards creating magic. I know a lot of my managers weren't happy about it, but they were in the same situation with their higher ups. It was absolutely ridiculous.
I just wanted to shed some light on what it's like for CM's. I had a very dear friend who got so depressed working at WDW that he became suicidal. Thanks goodness he quit and is very happy now. I quit too before that place could suck any more life out of me.
Realize that the CMs are living in an area with an extremely high cost of living and they're making minimum wage. Yeah they should care more, but their company should care for them more too. I loved working for Disney before the recession. I used to work Super Soap weekend 16 hours a day for 3 days straight and loved every minute of it. The good out weighed the bad. That's not the case anymore. Also, most CMs these days are CP (college program) and they are making literally nothing and are considered interns so they have no rights or protections as employees.
I'm sorry the service has gone down, I really am. In a perfect world it wouldn't. Just realize that in many instances CMs are now being discouraged from going out of their way to do a good job. Imagine how you would work and what your work environment would be like if good work was not rewarded and in some instances would come back and kick you in the butt and every little move was being watched for an excuse to fire you. At the end of my time there managers from other areas (that you wouldn't know) would come up to you posing as a guest and ask for assistance and you would help them out only to be called in to your manager's office a few days later and get written up or demoted because that wasn't your line of business and you should have told them to get help from another CM (this became the norm and caused severe paranoia on the job.) I would go home most nights fully expecting that the next day all the major unions would call for a strike.
Coming at it with this attitude of entitlement certainly doesn't help either. You are choosing to spend your money with a company that chooses to not do well by their employees. That's your choice. You don't care about the CMs, you only care about you and your family. So why are you shocked that the CM only cares about themselves and their families? Humility goes a long way. Bottom line is CMs are employees performing a job. Considering most people hate their jobs and don't go skipping off to work with a smile on their face everyday I don't know why it's so shocking that CMs don't either, it's not like they're showered in pixie dust on the way in. It shocks me that people would let 1 CMs behavior completely ruin a family vacation that you're probably only going to get to take once a year. A lot of the people on here are spewing out negativity towards CMs and they wonder why they're not getting positivity in return. Trust me, a CM can spot a pg a mile away. I don't believe for a minute that you are only negative here on the boards and are a bed of roses the rest of the time.
If Disney went back to the way they were before the recession I would go back in a heartbeat. It was fun and very fulfilling. As it is, I quit to start my own company and that has really taken off for me, so maybe it was meant to be.
I just wanted to show the other side of the story. Everyone that enters WDW property does deserve to be treated like a prince or princess, it is the experience that people are paying for, not the oftentimes cheap merchandise and long ques. I'm sorry if any of you have ever received bad service at WDW, I can say 99% of CMs that I knew (including me) truly wanted to go above and beyond for their guests and took a lot of pride in their work. However, there's only so much crap you can take before it starts spilling out onto the guests. If you want great service from a CM, the best thing you can do is be a great guest. That's pretty much true of everything in life. Human nature and emotions don't get locked away when you put on the name tag. I'm guessing you wouldn't yell at a co worker and then expect them to smile and help you, but many guests expect to have that type of interaction with CMs.
I have NEVER had a negative experience with a CM (or if I did it didn't linger in my memory for 5 minutes) and I've been going to WDW for 21 years now. Please give any negative CMs you see the benefit of the doubt. You don't know what's going on in their lives. For all you know they could have just had a death in the family or found out their spouse is leaving them. Disney doesn't allow you to take much time off and one time a friend of mine had to come to work after her mother forgot who she was for the first time after getting Alzheimer's. This CM was truly the cream of the crop, but I can tell you that day there were probably some guests who weren't happy with her and then came on these boards and talked about how a CM dared to be upset about their personal life while serving them. She was struggling to hold back tears most of the day and that caused her to be short. I can't even imagine what I would be like if I woke up and my mother didn't know who I was and knowing that it was only going to get worse.
Sorry for the long post, I just have strong feelings about this. We all need to treat our fellow human beings with respect, dignity, and understanding, whether we're a CM or a guest. Coming on here and complaining about CMs isn't going to cause that CM to come forward and apologize and it's not going to turn back the clock and it's not really adding anything positive to anyone's life. Move on, be the better person, live your life in a positive way and you will get positive back. If you do have a serious concern, contact Disney management. Most CMs want to do a good job, and being imperfect human beings, they will slip up. They shouldn't be crucified for it, especially when the good hard work they do 99% of the time goes unnoticed. It would shock me that sometimes I wouldn't even get a "Thank You" from a guest that I had bent over backwards for and gone above and beyond for.
To all you current CMs, I love you and thank you for all you do! Hang in there and keep spreading the pixie dust! If you're ever less than perfect with me, don't worry, I won't tell anyone
Really great post.
I'm not a CM but I work in retail and I honestly believe that if you haven't worked in customer service then you can't really comment. People are so rude it astounds me. I can see how it is hard for people who do treat CMs and the like with respect to understand why some CMs act the way they do, but its really hard to not become bitter when you are constantly berated, abused and just generally have to put up with people's ridiculous behaviour all day long. I know in my job I try really hard to do as much as I can and create the best experience for the customer but sometimes, as many people have said on this thread, it is just too much to handle. I can't comment on CM pay etc, but I'm sure this certainly would not help.
Unfortunately its a vicious cycle, with the rude, selfish individuals ruining it for everyone else.
. I mean all day, every day dealing with a constant flow of many different people. On the front line. There is a difference between that and say, an accountant or someone working in an office job similar to that.
